


The Path Untrodden

by superangsty



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I'll never learn how to tag things, Multi, Role Reversal, What Happened in Budapest (Marvel), i guess?, i suck at titles rip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superangsty/pseuds/superangsty
Summary: Clint has a happy childhood. Phil does not. Clint gets recruited by SHIELD at the olympics, Phil gets dragged in kicking and screaming.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Bobbi Morse (briefly), Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	The Path Untrodden

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes u go for months without writing and u get several messages w people begging u to update the friends fic and sometimes instead you pump out 5k words in a day for a fandom you're no longer part of and a ship you haven't written for in five years bc you saw a couple of paragraphs of an old WIP and got inspired.

When Clint Barton is just about a year old, his parents die in a car crash. He’s too young for a group home, so he and his brother are placed with temporary foster parents.

When he’s one and a half, he and his brother are adopted by the two lovely women who had taken them in.

When he’s six, he’s watching the Olympics on TV, awe on his face as he watches the archery. His moms sign him up for classes the next day.

Twelve years later, he’s won his first Olympic gold medal. A tall man in a long black coat approaches him after the medal ceremony and offers him a job in New York, along with the best training money could buy.

  
  


*

  
  


When Phil Coulson is eight years old, his father shoots him in the shoulder so he runs and never looks back.

When he’s 16, there’s an army recruitment stand at the fair his circus is at, so he lies about his age and fills out an application.

At 22, he’s a ranger and is starting to realise there are people willing to pay a hell of a lot more than the army for what he’s already doing, so he runs again.

At 27, a man in a suit shoots him in his bad shoulder, ties him to a chair, and offers him a job.

He stops running.

  
  


*

  
  


Clint has a problem.

Well, really, he has a lot of problems, but right now his problem is about 5’7” and nowhere to be found.

Last year, Fury had offered him a promotion if he could bring in one of America’s most notorious hitmen. Clint had said hell yeah, convinced Natasha to come with him, and a month later they were flying at top speed back to SHIELD headquarters with a wanted assassin bleeding out on the bench across from him, getting increasingly creative with his curses.

Clint had been less enthusiastic about the promotion when he found out he was becoming the guy’s handler.

Phil Coulson is an excellent shot. Not as good as Clint, but who is? He has this amazing way of – of almost turning invisible, really, hiding behind mild manners and a bland appearance. His targets never saw it coming. And he’s resourceful. The rumour mill says he once killed a man with a paperclip.

But he’s insubordinate. He won’t interact with his superiors. In the eight months since he’d recovered from the bullet in his shoulder, he’s only shown up to two physical therapy sessions and the psychiatrist assigned to him has never even seen him around headquarters, never mind in her office.

And he has an annoying habit of refusing to show up where he’s meant to.

It takes an hour, but he finds him in a Starbucks four blocks away, quietly sipping a large black coffee.

“Got lost on your way to the gym?”

Coulson looks up at him, no trace of surprise or annoyance on his face. Clint takes that as an invitation to sit down.

He raises an eyebrow. “I thought Romanov might like a break.”

“Do you know,” Clint says, remembering how Natasha had stormed into his office and spent ten minutes swearing at him in Russian about his useless little project, “I don’t think she does.”

“Well, you would know,” Coulson mutters.

Clint decides to ignore that one. “I can’t clear you for the field if you don’t pass your training.”

Coulson drains the last of his coffee and stands up. “It’s almost like I _know_ that,” he says with a smirk.

Clint walks back to headquarters alone.

  
  


*

  
  


It gets easier after that. Clint doesn’t see much of him – he’s not overseeing any of his training, there’s no reason to – but he finds Coulson a training buddy, Melinda May, and with her following him around everywhere he rarely misses a session.

May’s pretty good, apparently. Clint’s thinking of stealing her from her current handler.

Three months into the new normal, Fury drops a file on his desk, says “sort this out”, and leaves.

“You don’t have a _GED_?” Clint shouts ten minutes later, striding into the disused storage room Coulson has taken to hiding in.

“Hello to you too, _sir_.” Coulson looks up from the book he’s reading and blinks. “I’m off duty.”

“Most people spend their free time socialising, or --” he shakes his head. No need to get off topic. “You know if you don’t have a GED we can’t --”

“Clear me for field duty, I know,” Coulson cuts in, rolling his eyes. “For a bunch of spies, it took you a while to notice.”

SHIELD is a mix of ultra high performers who spent their whole lives preparing to pass the entrance exams, and a smaller group of people who had enough raw talent to be recognised and recruited by the higher-ups. Clint and Natasha, members of the ‘talented’ group, had been recruited at the same Olympics, and they’d both turned down college scholarships to train at SHIELD (which had it’s own degree programme for that very purpose). There’s the occasional thief, hacker, or hitman picked up off the streets, but it’s rare and Clint’s never been involved with them before, at least not enough for it to register that not everyone brought in is going to have a high school education.

Phil was a trained army ranger. He speaks six languages. He reads books on military history and actually seems to _enjoy_ them. Maybe Fury had known, but to Clint there’d been no clue.

“You know,” Clint says, sitting himself on the ground next to Coulson. “I’d almost think you don’t _want_ to be cleared for duty.”

Coulson looks at him blankly. “I don’t,” he says, simply, and turns back to his book.

“So why are you here?” Clint huffs in frustration, the only slip in his otherwise flawless ‘competent and badass agent’ mask. “Just to give me grief?”

“Sir,” Coulson says, putting down the book and looking straight at him. “All due respect, but I could not give a shit about you. I don’t _know_ you, you just sign my pay-checks and yell at me if I piss off my instructors.”

He pauses, and Clint thinks that he’s right. He could be more involved, could make more of an effort. He’s gonna have to be watching over him in the field one day, trusting him to make the right calls.

“If you remember,” Coulson continues, still in that same calm tone he always speaks in. “your recruitment spiel was to put a bullet in my shoulder and tell me I could come back to SHIELD or get another one in my head. I’m here because it’s _just_ preferable to death. Just.”

They’re the same age, Clint thinks absently. It seems wrong, sometimes, to be the boss of someone nine months older than him, especially when Clint’s always looked young and Coulson probably looks the same as he did ten years ago, which is the same as he’ll look ten years from now. Smooth skin, thin mousy hair, tired eyes. Strong, but not noticeably muscular thanks to his refusal to follow his nutrition plan. (Clint, on the other hand, forgoes the suit and wears tank tops any chance he can to show off his biceps). It seems wrong that somebody who in a lot of ways was probably _born_ to be a suit is instead acting up against one because circumstance meant he didn’t even have a goddamn _GED_.

“You’re _doing_ your GED.”

Coulson hums, looking up at the ceiling. “Not a big fan of science. Y’know, frogs and chemicals and stuff.”

“If I said you could do it at a public school instead of here would you do it?” He’ll figure it out with Fury later. It’ll probably mean more paperwork. Fuck.

“Can May come?”

“May has a PhD.”

Coulson just gives him a Look.

“Fine. Fine, I’ll speak to her.”

“Then we have a deal.”

  
  


*

  
  


The door to Clint’s office swings open, without a knock to alert him of anyone’s arrival, which means it could only be one of two people, and Natasha’s in Cuba.

“Delivery for you,” Coulson greets, waving a handful of manila files at him. “Mine and Mel’s mission reports, plus _somehow_ your paperwork found it’s way to my desk again,” he adds, as if he hadn’t stolen it during their debrief the day before, “so I did that, too.”

Clint takes it wordlessly, trying to resist the urge to laugh or cry or _something_ in relief. Focusing on a target for hours at a time was easy, but paperwork? It’s only a result of years of Nat’s badgering that he can sit down and do any at all.

“Consider it your engagement present,” Coulson adds, and Clint goes back from being grateful to the more familiar emotion of frustration with his agent.

“How the hell did you hear about _that_?” he asks, because _really_ , he’d only proposed to Bobbi last night, after everyone was _meant_ to have gone off to get some sleep.

Coulson grins. “I’m a spy, sir. It’s my job to know everything.”

“Sit down,” Clint says, in place of a reply.

That cuts down Coulson’s bravado, because he sits down without complaint and looks warily at Clint.

Clint just opens up a file and starts flicking through, scanning the meticulous notes that Coulson always made. He doesn’t pay much attention to it, really, because this is more about Coulson thinking he’s in trouble and less about the quality of his reports.

Or, it’s not about the quality of the reports until he open’s May’s folder.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, slowly looking up to catch Coulson’s eye. “Why May’s report is written in French?”

Coulson shrugs. “The female mind is is a mystery, sir.”

“Clearly, because last time I checked she doesn’t actually _speak_ French.”

“Must have slipped my --” Coulson pauses, smirking, before correcting himself “-- _her_ mind.”

Clint sighs, and closes the files, shifting them to the side of his desk. “You make my life very difficult.”

That earns him a smile, like he’s paid Coulson a compliment.

It doesn’t really matter, honestly. The reports are done and Clint won’t have to think about them again. But still, he’s curious. “What did she trade you?”

“Barton, I’m hurt!” Coulson gasps, pressing a hand to his chest mockingly. “I did it out of the goodness of my heart.”

“First warning.”

“Fine. A week’s wages.”

“ _Why?_ ”

Coulson rolls his eyes. “She wanted to spend time with her boyfriend,” he replies, and _that’s_ a curveball because Clint had thought they – well, clearly not. “Just like _you_ wanted to spend time with your _fiancee_.”

Clint had thought, in the two and a bit years he’d been working with them, that Coulson and May were – _something_ , if not actually a couple. He rarely saw one without the other, and they always seemed close in a way that reminded him of himself and Natasha, back in the early days.

But if they weren’t, then Clint knew less about his agents than he thought, which was kind of a blow. He’d thought they might almost be on the path to being friends.

“Is that all?” Coulson asks, snapping Clint back to reality.

“Yes.” Wait. “No,” he corrects, opening up his desk drawer. “I got you something.”

“Me?” Coulson mutters, frowning as he takes the envelope from Clint’s hands.

“Felt bad that we were on a mission over your birthday,” he explains, ignoring Coulson’s protest of ‘I don’t celebrate my birthday’. “Plus, y’know, it’s the big three-oh.”

“Sir...” Coulson starts, carefully shuffling the card out of the envelope. He glances at it briefly, before snapping his head back up. “Wait, I’m _thirty_? Shit, I’m practically an OAP.”

Clint waits for Coulson to open the card, holding back a smile when he asks “what --”

“It’s uh, it’s a trading card,” he says, “They used to make them in the second world war.”

Coulson just stares at him.

“I just thought – y’know, you like Captain America,” oh god, Clint panics, _does_ he like Captain America? Or is that another thing he’d assumed that isn’t true? “But, I mean, it’s not --”

“I love it, Barton,” Coulson says, smiling softly. “Thank you.”

“Call me Clint, when we’re off duty.”

“Only if you’ll call me Phil.”

  
  


*

  
  


“You came!”

Clint’s on his third, maybe fourth drink (hey, he’s the one paying for the open bar), when he spots Phil hovering awkwardly at a table and rushes over to him, beaming. Phil smiles back, for once with genuine warmth, and pats him on the shoulder.

“Of course,” Phil replies, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “Not every day your boss gets married.”

That makes Clint cringe, wishing he wasn’t just there because, for once, he was trying to be a good employee.

He looks good, though, in a grey suit with a dark blue tie. It must be new, because Clint’s pretty sure the only clothes he owned were his tactical gear and the cheap black suit he wore every day. It’s not like field agents have a huge wardrobe budget.

He really should get paid more, actually, now that he’s a level two. Clint makes a mental note to speak to Fury about that when he gets back from his honeymoon.

Clint’s been quiet too long, because Phil comments “Morse looks happy,” to fill the silence.

Clint looks over to where Bobbi – his _wife_ , Jesus, that is never gonna get old – is swinging Natasha (her maid of honour, since Barney wouldn’t give up the best man spot) around on the dance floor. She looks stunning, her golden hair flowing over her bare shoulders, her face lit up in a constant smile.

He’s not sure he’s ever loved anyone this much, not even Natasha.

“Yeah...” he replies, dreamily, before turning back to Phil. “How about you, huh? Bring a date?”

Phil’s smile falls a bit. “I brought Mel.”

“Waste of a plus-one, May was already invited.” A waiter comes past with a tray of champagne, so he grabs a flute for each of them. “Don’t you want – I don’t know, I mean, you never --”

It’s probably the booze, but it’s getting hard to follow his train of thought. The point – the _point_ was that in all the time he’d known him, Clint had never even heard a _rumour_ of Phil dating someone, or hooking up with someone, and as his boss it’s probably not something he should concern himself with but - “It’s a wedding! It’s romantic! Don’t you want – that?”

Even drunk, Clint can see Phil’s shoulders tighten. “Clint – I mean, sir, maybe...” He tips his head back quickly, glancing up at the ceiling before looking back at Clint. “I think it would be best if you… don’t ask, so to speak, about my personal life.”

Oh, what an idiot.

He’s _barely_ what anyone could call a good agent, not with all his authority issues and his tendency to go off plan if he thought he had a better one, so it’s no surprise to Clint that Phil Coulson had never taken the time to read the stupid employee handbook, but _still_. What an idiot.

He leans in slightly, so that Phil can hear him when he mutters “SHIELD isn’t military, we’re a private organisation.”

“What?”

“My parents!” Clint declares, probably louder than he meant to. He throws his hands up in the air, barely managing to stop his champagne from sloshing over the edge of the glass. “You should meet my parents!”

“ _What_?” Phil repeats, but Clint ignores him, gesturing for him to stay put as he makes a beeline through the throng of people.

He finds them easily, leaning against the head table and chatting to someone he thinks might be Bobbi’s aunt. They extract themselves from the conversation as soon as they see him coming, letting him grab their hands with no more complaint than a fond chuckle and following him back over to Phil’s table.

“Phil,” he says, slightly breathless from the fast walk. “These are my parents. Mom, Mama, this is my friend Phil.”

The tension seeps out of Phil, and his eyes light up. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says, turning on the Charming Gentleman airs that he wears so well. He turns to look at Clint, muttering “friend?”

“Sorry, what would you prefer? This is Phil, my bitchboy?”

“Your _employee_ ,” Phil corrects, grimacing as he shakes his parent’s hands.

“Friend.”

“Fine.”

Clint’s Mom looks at his Mama, raising an eyebrow, like they can’t believe someone this normal would willingly hang out with him, but they both smile warmly at Phil and shoo Clint away as they lead him to sit and talk at a table.

  
  


*

  
  


“Sir, I need to talk to you,” Phil says, walking into Clint’s office like it hadn’t been locked, like Clint hadn’t just been in the middle of a conversation.

Natasha turns to look at him, lips pursed. “He goes too easy on you,” she says. “In Russia, if I had interrupted my superiors, I’d have no dinner for a week.”

Insulting him is the closest Natasha will ever come to acknowledging that she and Phil are – sort of – friends. She doesn’t care enough to insult people she doesn’t like.

“Well then it’s a good thing you’ve not been _in_ Russia for almost twenty years,” Clint replies with a fake smile, and looks up at Phil. “What is it, Coulson?”

“In private, sir.”

Clint catches Natasha’s eye and she nods. Obviously, he’ll tell her about it later. He would even if she didn’t have a higher security clearance than him, but it’s the principle of the thing.

She gets up and glides out, leaving Clint alone in the room with Phil, who’s standing tightly by the door.

“Sit down.”

Coulson walks over to the chair and sits.

“Sir – Barton – _Clint_ , you have to call off this mission,” he says, eyes darting round the room.

Well, that’s interesting, Clint thinks. He’d heard from Hill that May had chased Fury down yesterday and asked him the same thing. And Natasha, in the senior agents briefing earlier, had looked mildly uncomfortable, which meant she thought something was seriously wrong.

He thought he’d been paying attention, but maybe he’d missed something? He’s not _blind_ , obviously if three of SHIELD’s best agents are uncomfortable something must be up.

But: “that’s not my call to make, Coulson. You know they’ve got me out in the field for this one too.”

Coulson flinches. It’s barely noticeable, but Clint’s known him for years now, recognises the tiny twitch of muscle by his eye.

“Are you saying,” he starts, voice even quieter than usual, “that you won’t be on my comm?”

“I thought they’d briefed you already.”

Most handlers struggled with Coulson. He talked when they needed him to be quiet and was quiet when they needed him to talk. He regularly insulted them and their tactics, and it was rarer for him to obey an order than for him to disobey one. Therefore, in the six years since Coulson was cleared for field duty there’d only been a handful of missions where he wasn’t reporting to Clint, and only two where Clint wasn’t on his comm at all.

Those two times, of course, were the ones where things went horrifically wrong and Clint was left to spend the weeks Coulson was in medical convincing the higher-ups that no, he wasn’t a liability, and that he’d reviewed the comm logs and _both_ times it was the handler that screwed everything up.

He understood why Coulson wasn’t keen to do it again.

“You know it’s highly likely they’re gonna bump you up to level five after this,” he tries to explain, knowing it’s a shitty excuse for an excuse. “They’re probably just making sure you’re ready to work without me.”

“Well then tell them I’m not!” Coulson replies, in the most forceful tone Clint’s ever heard from him. “Please, Clint,” he adds, voice cracking.

Clint just shakes his head. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. We fly for Budapest in the morning.”

  
  


*

  
  


Sometimes, Clint wishes Bobbi still loved him. Or even that they’d at least tried to struggle through longer than the two years they did, just so that he’d have someone to come home to after missions like these. Because right now, everyone he cares about in the entire world is out in the field, same as him, and he doesn’t have contact with any of them.

He shuffles behind a crumbled wall for shelter and starts fiddling with his comm, praying that he’ll get a signal, _any_ signal.

Eventually, it crackles to life, and he talks into it frantically, afraid it might cut out again at any second. “Barton here, do you read?”

“Clint, thank fuck,” Coulson’s voice comes blaring through the line, and Clint is too relieved to call him out on his insubordination. “May is down, do you have contact with base?”

“Nope. Can you move her?” Before Coulson has a chance to reply, he changes his plan. “Don’t try. Where are you?”

“West of the river, about a half mile north of the castle.”

It wasn’t great. But if he ran: “I can be there in twenty. Have you heard from Romanov?”

“Nothing, she’s still on the inside. We might have to --”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he hears Phil say on the other end, but he’s already sprinting.

It’s the middle of the night, and the streets are empty. He manages to get shots at two snipers as he runs, and god, he’s never missed his bow more, but with all his ducking in and out of alleyways nobody stays on his tail.

He finds them in an alley behind a shop, May leant up against a dumpster with Coulson crouched over her, pressing down hard on her chest, blood seeping through his fingers.

There’s a first aid kit in his pack, so he pulls it out and starts working around Coulson’s hands, making as quick a job of it as he can. Once he’s cleaned up as much as he can, he hands Coulson a needle and thread and prays she won’t bleed out in the time it takes to stitch up the bullet hole in her chest.

She probably won’t work in the field ever again.

If she lives, that is.

“Coulson, keep trying to reach base. We’ll need an extraction team.”

“Sir?”

“I’m going after Nat.”

Coulson’s eyes go wide, all the blood draining from his face. “ _No_.”

“I can’t let her die.”

“You can’t, you won’t - “

Clint lowers his head, blinks at the floor. He knows he probably won’t make it out, but there doesn’t seem much point in surviving if he has to do it without Natasha. “You’ll stay here, and you _will not_ stop me,” he tells Coulson, careful not to look at him. “That’s an order.”

“You asshole,” Coulson growls, grabbing his shirt, and suddenly he’s kissing him.

It’s not a good kiss. It’s more like lips smashing against each other, and Clint’s face is too bruised and bloody to feel any sensation other than a generalised throbbing of pain, and he’s too stunned to do anything but just stand there and let the kiss sort of _happen_ to him, but when Phil pulls away he finds himself wishing he could draw him back in his arms and keep him there forever, but there’s no time because _Nat’s in trouble_.

He runs.

  
  


*

  
  


Phil is curled up in a chair next to May’s bed, when Clint finds him. Clint hates SHIELD medical as much as anyone, but he will say he’s always appreciated the comfortable armchairs placed in every room for overprotective agents to watch over their friends.

Clint got lucky, he made it out with only a broken arm. Phil, only a couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. Natasha had only ended up with a few hairs out of place, as per usual.

May, not so much. The bullet had fractured her sternum, and a broken rib had punctured her lung, and to top it all off the stitches they’d given her to save her life had left her with a serious infection. But, she’s alive.

He taps Phil on the shoulder to wake him, smiling at the way his agent slowly blinks up at him.

“Barton,” he croaks in greeting, and Clint takes this as invitation to pour him a glass of water and pull up a chair.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Phil replies, gripping his hands on the arms of his chair to push himself into a more upright position. “Like I got hit by a truck and pushed off a cliff, but fine.”

“Good,” Clint says, and then hums, because he just _knows_ there’s about to be an awkward silence if he doesn’t think of something to say.

“I got your reports,” he says after a moment. “You didn’t have to do that, I know it’s hard, when...” he gestures at May. “So thank you.”

“Sometimes I think if I didn’t do paperwork then half of SHIELD would be buried under a pile of its own disorganisation.”

Clint huffs out a laugh at that, feeling some of the tension leave his body when he catches Phil’s eye and sees him smirking. “But you don’t think too highly of yourself, or anything,” he teases.

“I edited out any references of… insubordination,” he adds, hoping that he’s coming off as ‘casual’ and not ‘somebody who’s never had a human conversation before’. “No need to risk your chance of promotion.”

The higher ups won’t care about a few instances of Phil swearing at Clint or disobeying orders, they’re used to it by now. And they both know it. It’s just meant to be symbolic, a peace offering.

“I wanted to apologise, Cli – I mean, Barton. Sir.”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “You know I don’t care about that stuff.”

“Yes you do.”

“Yes, I do, but you still don’t have to apologise.”

Phil shuts his eyes and lets out a long, slow breath. “That’s not it though. I wanted to apologise about – the other thing. That I didn’t put in the report.”

He’s giving him an out, Clint realises. Giving him the chance to say that he doesn’t remember, or that it was nothing, that they should just move on.

Thing is, Clint’s been thinking about that, and he doesn’t want to just move on.

He ignores Phil’s apology, turning to look at May lying still on the bed. “With the promotion, you’ll only be two security levels below me. I won’t be your handler anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phil replies. “I was tired and stupid and I shouldn’t have done it.”

“What if...” Well, here goes. No turning back now. “What if I said wanted to do it again?”

“I’d tell you to get your head checked out.”

Clint reaches out, puts a hand on Phil’s arm. “Phil.”

Phil’s face falls. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“You don’t _get it_ ,” he repeats, standing up and pacing over to the window. “The promotion doesn’t _mean_ anything, we’re still not equals, look at you.”

He waves in Clint’s direction, not looking back as he continues. “You’ve got – you’ve got the loving family, the prom king crown, the olympic gold _fucking_ medal,” he says, bringing his hands back down to grip the windowsill. “And as if that’s not enough, you’ve basically got the eyesight of an _actual hawk_ \--”

Clint wants to protest that one, because his eyesight may be good but it’s not _superhuman_ good, but Phil just keeps going on.

“- and you’ve got Natasha, who we both know only doesn’t have her own gold medal because she was forced to throw her set, and who would do _anything_ for you, and look at me! I dropped out of the second grade, I’m an army deserter, I’ve got a bad shoulder and reading glasses that mean I won’t be in the field much longer and my only friend in the world is barely off her _deathbed_ ,” he stops to pull in a shuddering breath, finally turning back to face Clint, “and everyone’s telling me to be happy about a promotion in a job I don’t even want! A job I _never_ wanted, but it was this or death, because they’d never be able to hold me in prison and they know it, so instead I’m stuck with a life sentence _here_!”

He stops, finally, and fixes Clint with a hard stare, and Clint doesn’t know what to say.

He doesn’t have to find the words, though, because Coulson’s stormed out before he can open his mouth.

  
  


*

  
  


He finds Coulson in the Starbucks four blocks away, sipping at a large black coffee. Same as always.

Coulson doesn’t say a word to him, but he doesn’t get up to leave, either, so Clint sits.

“I know I don’t – _get it_ ,” he says, determined to just get straight to the point, “I can’t imagine what it would be like if our circumstances were reversed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be equals. Partners.”

Coulson says nothing.

“And,” aaand, this is the part he really doesn’t want to do, but needs must. “And I spoke to Fury. You’re free to go, if that’s what you want.”

Still, Coulson says nothing. Clint sits there for a few moments, waiting, before he gives up and starts to get up to leave.

“I don’t want to go,” Phil says, so suddenly and quietly that Clint almost jumps out of his skin, so he sits back down.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t,”Phil repeats, the corner of his mouth twitching in what might _almost_ be a smile.

Good. Good, Clint wants to say, because sure he can’t live without Natasha but he’s pretty sure he can’t live without Phil, either. He thinks he’s known that for a while, actually. He doesn’t say that, though. He just nods.

“So, partners?”

“If you want.”

Phil holds out a hand for Clint to shake. “Partners.”

Clint takes it.

  
  


  
  


“Now, come buy me dinner,” he adds. Clint pulls him across the table and kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed! As always, please leave comments and kudos, they always make me smile like an idiot, and come message me on my tumblr @superangsty!


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